Many efforts have been made to eliminate the effects of pollution in creeks, streams, rivers, bays, and other navigable and non-navigable bodies of water. One important source of water pollution is stormwater runoff from roads and bridges. Stormwater runoff occurs when stormwater generated from precipitation or melting events contacts a surface impervious to liquids, such as paved roadways. Such roadways are used by millions of vehicles, including trucks carrying various types of cargo. Considering the number of vehicles travelling on roadways, contaminants are inevitably released onto roadways, both intentionally and unintentionally. Such contaminants may include hydrocarbons such as engine oil, gasoline, or other types of automotive fluids released due to mechanical failure. In addition, other sources of contaminants on roadways may include individuals improperly disposing of various types of waste on roadways, contaminants being improperly secured on or within vehicles, resulting in unintentional release, and soil erosion during construction and after construction of roads and bridges.
On many roadways, pollutants simply run off the roadway with stormwater and flow onto land, which may result in pollutants released into groundwater, or eventually into water bodies via creeks, streams, ditches, etc. For elevated roadways, many bridges have scupper holes located at spaced intervals on a low side of the bridge deck to allow drainage from the bridge. The release of pollutants is particularly problematic on bridges over water bodies into which pollutants may be directly discharged from the roadway, though pollutants discharged from overland roadways also result in runoff into water bodies. Some attempts have previously been made to reduce pollutant runoff from roadways. However, known systems and method for reducing pollutant discharge have numerous problems and tradeoffs that may limit the performance of such systems and reduce the capacity to effectively and economically reduce pollutants. Such systems and methods typically include large piping systems through which stormwater runoff flows to large treatment structures or ponds, which may occupy large tracts of land to store and treat stormwater prior to its release into the environment. In addition, these systems are generally expensive to operate and maintain.
As such, there is a need in the art for a system and a method for treating runoff from roadways that does not require large treatment structures or tracts of land.